All Multimedia. All Research. Insight Viewing Marine Life Watching marine animals in their natural habitat can be a positive way to promote conservation and respect for animals and their environment.
Read More. Species Name. Filter Results. Grey seals usually come ashore to breed from late September until December. They prefer barren uninhabited islands and often go back to the same beach each year to breed. They give birth to a single pup of about 14kg, which the mother sniffs to learn its scent. Pups are suckled five or six times a day for 16 — 18 days, more than doubling and their weight by the time they are weaned and have moulted their white fur.
Grey seals feed around rocky coasts, sheltered coves, clear waters and sandy bays of offshore islands. Pollution, especially chlorinated compounds such as PCBs, entanglement in discarded fishing nets, and disturbance by tourists. Locally common. The fossils are earbones, the part of the skull that contains the structures needed for hearing.
The anatomy of earbones means they are very useful for helping palaeontologists identify what animal fossils belong to. Together with the recently discovered Eomonachus a 3 million-year-old New Zealand monk seal , these fossils demonstrate that monk seals had a long history in Australasia.
These discoveries have now almost doubled the number of geographic regions monk seals used to occupy in the past, and confirm they used to be a much larger group. If monk seals were so widespread down under in the past, why are they no longer here?
The short answer is climate change. Around 2. Exposure to the elements increased infant mortality and left adults unprotected from fishermen, who all too often kill the animals rather than share their catch there even used to be a state bounty for killing the seals.
Luckily colder weather the last couple of years has benefitted the seals and allowed them to breed more successfully. Meanwhile new restrictions on the use of nets in some parts of the lake have lowered the number of seals accidentally caught and killed by fishermen, and six new protected zones established this past April should provide the seals with additional safe territories.
Even with a few good years under their belt, problems remain. According to a report from Finland's Yle Uutiset , this year's pups are as much as 30 percent underweight. Scientists say the winter brought enough snow to build nests but it arrived late in the season, lowering the amount of time for parents to nurse their young pups. Placing the Lacs des Loups Marins harbor seal a.
Ungava seals, P. Estimates range from as few as 50 to as many as , all of which live in freshwater lakes and rivers in Quebec, where they have been cut off from the ocean for millennia.
According to Fisheries and Oceans Canada , the subspecies—which was protected in —has declined due to hunting and faces risks from climate change and potential hydroelectric dams, although none are actually in the planning stages. I would say more about this subspecies, but that's about all that's available.
There hasn't been any new scientific information on these seals in years. We now move from the cold north to the warmer south, where the critically endangered Mediterranean monk seals Monachus monachus live in and around the sea from which they get their name.
Long the victim of commercial hunting and persecution by fishermen, these seals also lost much of their former habitat to coastal development and suffered from the effects of both pollution and ocean traffic.
Today the population for this species is estimated at fewer than individuals, and perhaps as low as Even that count doesn't quite convey the true risk these seals face, as those to animals are scattered over much of the Mediterranean, as well as two small populations in the Atlantic. About seals live off the coast of Western Sahara. About 20 more can be found on the tiny Desertas Islands, a little over kilometers from mainland Portugal.
The three islands in the archipelago, totaling less than 15 square kilometers, are a protected nature reserve for the seals. The future of Mediterranean monk seals will depend upon their ability to breed. The seals used to raise their pups in coastal caves, which have mostly been destroyed by modern development. That leaves pups unprotected, and mortality rates as high as 50 percent have been observed. Research has also shown that the species suffers from a genetic bottleneck, reducing their genetic diversity and creating congenital defects.
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